1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of resolving data. More particularly, the present invention involves methods and systems for providing an address correction service to customers of a carrier. The address correction service uses a machine readable code.
2. Related Art
Consumers receive deliveries of numerous advertisements, promotions, and other correspondence from business entities. Every day, various business mailers mail significant amounts of mailpieces to their customers. Unfortunately, for various reasons, not all mail may be delivered. Recipients may, for example, move to another location or leave for an extended period of time. In another example, business mailers may have incorrect delivery addresses for some of its customers. Due to the large volumes of business mailings and associated costs, business mailers may wish to keep track of the customers whose delivery address is undeliverable, as well as maintain correct delivery addresses for each of its customers. Unfortunately, a majority of business mailers lack tools and resources for tracking and correcting their customers' delivery addresses.
The United States Postal Service™ is an independent government agency that provides delivery and other services to the public. The U.S. Postal Service™ is widely recognized as a safe and reliable means for sending and receiving mail and other items. With the advent and steady growth of electronic mail and electronic commerce, the physical mail stream will increasingly be utilized for sending and receiving packages.
The U.S. Postal Service™ possesses reliable tools for correcting and updating delivery addresses. For example, the U.S. Postal Service™ maintains a database identifying valid delivery addresses for customers. When customers relocate or leave for extended periods of time, the U.S. Postal Service™ generally has a forwarding delivery address. Most business mailers may access such a database by asking the U.S. Postal Service™ to provide them with a notification of undeliverable delivery addresses, for example. In another example, business mailers may also request a corrected valid delivery address for customers who have relocated.
Therefore, the need to efficiently provide corrected delivery address data has become a common need for many carriers. More specifically, efficiently providing valid delivery address data has become a critical service for many delivery system operators and business mailers.
Processes for providing corrected delivery addresses to business mailers may require human intervention. Inefficiencies resulting from manual labor intervention can be very costly and time consuming. As a result, the cost of providing a corrected delivery address may be high. Consequently, fewer business mailers can afford to purchase the service. Eliminating labor intervention may also allow significantly reduced time for processing undeliverable mail. As a result, quality of service may increase, especially for business mailers mailing time sensitive correspondence. Inaccuracy is another inefficiency associated with manual labor. A process relying on manual labor is always subject to inevitable human errors. Subsequently, at least some amount of mail never reaches its destination due to human error.
Another disadvantage of the current process is esthetic appearance of the mailpiece. Currently, each business mailer wishing to receive corrected delivery address service has to provide certain information on the face of each mailpiece it intends to mail. Research proves, however, the existence of a direct connection between the amount of data printed on a mailpiece face and customers' response to that mailpiece. Interestingly, according to the studies, a lesser amount of human readable information appearing on the mailpiece face generally results in a higher rate of consumer response. Accordingly, there remains a need for an automated and mechanized process for efficiently providing corrected delivery address data to business mailers.